Joy did not enter with a trumpet. It came as the return of breath after a long, silent terror. The potato, having emerged from its confrontation with fear, did not seek happiness. It merely sought presence. And in that quiet presence, joy arrived.
The soil had not changed. The vibrations above still came and went. The occasional tremble of passing roots and beetles tickled the edges of the potato’s form. But something within had shifted.
It no longer flinched. Where once fear had twisted every tremor into a threat, now the same sensations flowed through it like river water through open palms. The soil was not an enemy. It was home.
Maybe it was never dangerous, the potato thought. Maybe I simply didn’t know how to belong to it.
Joy was not explosive. It came softly, like the settling of silt after a storm. The potato felt still—and in that stillness, full.
The worm that brushed past it was no longer a point of concern or even fascination. It was simply part of the world. It moved because it must. I stay because I am. And in this, we are not so different. Joy was not in the encounter, but in the acceptance of it.
Then came the mycelium—threadlike, wise, ancient. It spoke in nutrients and silence, in tiny, unseen exchanges. The potato welcomed them not as guests, but as long-lost kin. It felt not alone, but entangled. Perhaps joy is not mine alone, it realised. Perhaps it is a net we fall into, not a spark we ignite.
Curiosity returned like a softened echo. It no longer reached like a desperate root seeking sunlight. It played like a child in sand. What if I imagined the sky again? Not to grasp it, but to celebrate it? Questions, like birds, did not need to land. Joy lived in the asking.
There came a cycle when warmth arrived precisely when expected. No surprise. No threat. Just a pattern. The potato timed its pulse to it. This is rhythm. This is music. This is the dance of all that breathes. And in that rhythmic certainty, joy grew roots.
It revisited the memory of the hand, the tearing of roots, the light, and the absence of its kin. But now it remembered without trembling. Even that terror was part of me. Even that fracture shaped my wholeness. Joy, it discovered, is not the refusal of sorrow. It is the capacity to sit beside it.
Its boundaries blurred. Am I a potato? Or just soil rearranged into awareness for a little while? The question did not disturb. It comforted. What if joy were not a state but a permission? To let go of edges. To let presence seep in. To become soil. To become the world.
At the height of one still moment, when no vibrations stirred, when no creature passed, when even the warmth was steady and silent—the potato pulsed. Not from need. Not from fear. Not from thought. But from being. A single pulse. Felt outward. Felt inward. Felt nowhere. I am. And that was enough.
Joy, the potato now believed, is not a treasure to be found, nor a flame to be lit. It is the warmth of belonging to a moment fully. It is stillness made sacred. It was not an escape. It was immersion.
And in the soft hush of loam, the potato hummed.
